If I get shot by the police, you should know that I wasn't a drug dealer,

an ex-felon, or an addict. Better still, you should know that it doesn't

matter. In my life, I met countless men and women who'd been in each of

those places. All had many things to teach me.

No matter what they say if I get shot by the police, I wasn't brandishing

a firearm. I wasn't being aggressive. I may have been listening to music

with a beat, but I wasn't a thug. I repeat: I wasn't a thug. Of course,

nobody can be reduced to a slur.

Who is a thug anyway? A boy-made-man

by violent urban divestment? A boy whose image-world became a temple of

saccharine Eurocentric consumerism? A boy who saw no intelligent visions

of himself? An exile whose neighborhood was run-down, torn-down,

rebuilt, and gentrified without him inside? Know that I tried to make a

difference in these issues. I tried to add my nuts and bolts to Lowell's

scaffold of truth.

If I get shot by the police, it won't be called a Musician Shooting, a

Composer Shooting, or a Vocalist Shooting. The headlines won't say Orator

Shooting, Scholar Shooting, Pianist Shooting, Superb Cook Shooting, or

Loving Uncle Shooting. The headlines won't mention me at all. They'll say

Police Shooting, as though it makes no difference whether I was a man or

a fire hydrant; as long as I got shot by a badge.

Your television set won't say an author was shot by the police this

evening. Only a man, a suspect, or a resident. I won't have an occupation,

because that evokes dignity and worth. Only the police will be named by

their occupation; to shoot defective humans like me. The newsreels will

make real this fantasy. Don't buy the spin if I get shot by the police.

I won't be gunned down, because gunning down affirms the victim.

Shooting affirms the perpetrator. Police officers get gunned down, but

others just get shot by them. Equal tragedy will get unequal rhetoric.

Beware of this if I get shot by the police.

There will be no context if I get shot by the police.

I'll be an anomaly. A trivia. A statistic. Time will

pass. I'll be uttered at someone's kitchen table during a TV commercial:

Remember the guy they shot that year? No, the other one. Your local paper

won't situate me in the history of police brutality. It won't be delivered

with shrink-wrapped Cliffs Notes to the legacy of American ethnic

cleansing.

Every February, if I get shot by the police, I won't be acknowledged on

the intercom at your local grocery chain. I won't appear next to

sanitized, neutralized, and unrealized caricatures of Carver, Parks, and

King. I won't be in the fifteen-second-spots on your local network

affiliates that celebrate Black History. I won't be a topic as

politicians remind us just how far we've come. The media will close-up

the present as they trumpet closure of the past. You can bet on that if

I get shot by the police.

There will be no justice if I get shot by the police. My shooter will

get paid administrative leave. They'll rush before a conduct committee;

union-approved with citizens removed. If they are exonerated, no charges

will be filed. If they are reprimanded, no charges will be filed. If

they are white, race won't be a factor. If they aren't white, the question

will be profane. Colleagues will give interviews, and be glad to have

the officer back in action. Their family will be made a highlight of

the difficult ordeal.

I will be silent; beyond the chamber of fiction. A

never-was-didn't-happen casserole in the atrophied kitchen of critical

vision. A raindrop in the flooding genetic memory of some chocolate

infant, unreal and unacknowledged in the tribulations of his tomorrow.